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I was going to say that - I'm increasingly subscribing to "bullshit jobs" theory : * productivity for goods is high and availability is high (we can discuss in

I was going to say that - I'm increasingly subscribing to "bullshit jobs" theory : * productivity for goods is high and availability is high (we can discuss inequality and distribution) * we just don't need everybody to work 40hrs a week to obtain collectively good standard of living * but as a society we are uncomfortable with universal basic income * so instead we basically do UBI through inefficient, unnecessary jobs That's my current perspective at least. As I continue to grow older and slide into cynicism though, I'm likely to switch to "everybody is idiots and everything is screwed up" theory more and more :-D

opportune 3y ago
Who's saying that lady's job is bullshit just because it can be automated? There is real value in paying some up front cost in detection/monitoring/validation of data to prevent mistakes. Just because software engineers would consider her job "beneath" them because they could do it faster or better does not make it not worth doing. There are mega-efficient factory farms in Nebraska that are immensely productive per-human involved, but that doesn't mean what hobby farmers in Connecticut or subsistence farmers in Africa are doing is bullshit. I think "bullshit jobs" are less of a thing than people believe. It's just that people devalue assembly-line or cog-in-machine work, even when they're the ones doing it - especially in the US where we grow up wanting to be a unique success story like an entertainment celebrity or rich entrepreneur and so that kind of work is antithetical to our idea of a successful person. Fact of the matter is, machines needs cogs, and we don't have an infinite capacity to replace human cogs with automated ones.
- concordDance 3y ago
  Does she find that task enjoyable and fulfilling? If not, it's bullshit. And if bet money on it NOT being enjoyable and fulfilling. Humans almost universally hate being cogs doing the same repetitive trivial action over and over.
  - oldsecondhand 3y ago
    Do janitors find their job enjoyable and fulfilling? Probably not. Their job is still important for the functioning of society, so I wouldn't call it bullshit.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      I was a janitor for a long time in my younger years, and I actually did find it enjoyable and fulfilling. Just sayin'.
      - ethbr1 3y ago
        What did you enjoy about it? Curious!
        JohnFen 3y ago
        I enjoyed that what I did made a real impact on people, I enjoyed the sense of satisfaction from making a space nice again, and I enjoyed that it wasn't intellectually demanding, which gave me plenty of time every workday to think about hard programming problems. There's a real sense of accomplishment in it, and it's nice that people can immediately see and enjoy the results of your hard work. There's also something about doing manual labor that is satisfying. And I enjoyed being "invisible" around people who used the spaces I cleaned. You usually don't exist, so people tend to continue to speak to each other as if nobody else is listening. I learned a lot about people that way.
    - namaria 3y ago
      The 'probably not' bit of your reasoning is self serving.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
> so instead we basically do UBI through inefficient, unnecessary jobs. Your first 3 bullet points make sense, but this last one is where I think the normal theory behind "bullshit jobs" really falls apart. Every individual business has a large, strong economic incentive to not hire these bullshit jobs if they don't need to, so why should we think they would be so generous to engage in this "bullshit jobs charity"? I think what is really happening is that as society advances, lots of rules, regulations and processes just build up and up over time, and this complexity eventually becomes self-sustaining, even if it greatly diverges from the original intent of the original rules. Case in point (which is a common case I know) is the complete, total insanity of the US healthcare system, specifically how healthcare is paid for. Literally every single person I know that has ever gotten into some aspect of healthcare payments (potentially with an idea to improve the madness) eventually comes to the conclusion "The whole system is completely fucked, it should all just be torn down and greatly simplified." The problem, though, is now there are a ton of entrenched interests who depend on that complexity for their livelihood (I heard it referred to as "an abusive relationship" - Company A exists to "simplify some aspects of healthcare payments", which means they depend on the underlying complexity in the first place to exist), so there are no real incentives from the people that control the levers to simplify. So a lot of those bullshit jobs come about to manage that complexity, but it's not like some company thought "let's hire people to do busywork so they'll have employment."
- ludston 3y ago
  Whilst business owners have a financial incentive not to employ people, there are competing incentives. For example, non-owners are incentivised to have more people reporting to them because it increases their status and status is usually correlated with salary. In fact, when you are rich enough that money doesn't mean anything any more, you may as well have a bunch of people employed to do nothing but make you feel important and powerful.
  - spease 3y ago
    > In fact, when you are rich enough that money doesn't mean anything any more, you may as well have a bunch of people employed to do nothing but make you feel important and powerful. I’d just like to proactively coin the term “Ego Engineer” for the post-AGI world.

opportune 3y ago

Who's saying that lady's job is bullshit just because it can be automated? There is real value in paying some up front cost in detection/monitoring/validation of data to prevent mistakes. Just because software engineers would consider her job "beneath" them because they could do it faster or better does not make it not worth doing. There are mega-efficient factory farms in Nebraska that are immensely productive per-human involved, but that doesn't mean what hobby farmers in Connecticut or subsistence farmers in Africa are doing is bullshit. I think "bullshit jobs" are less of a thing than people believe. It's just that people devalue assembly-line or cog-in-machine work, even when they're the ones doing it - especially in the US where we grow up wanting to be a unique success story like an entertainment celebrity or rich entrepreneur and so that kind of work is antithetical to our idea of a successful person. Fact of the matter is, machines needs cogs, and we don't have an infinite capacity to replace human cogs with automated ones.

concordDance 3y ago
Does she find that task enjoyable and fulfilling? If not, it's bullshit. And if bet money on it NOT being enjoyable and fulfilling. Humans almost universally hate being cogs doing the same repetitive trivial action over and over.
- oldsecondhand 3y ago
  Do janitors find their job enjoyable and fulfilling? Probably not. Their job is still important for the functioning of society, so I wouldn't call it bullshit.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    I was a janitor for a long time in my younger years, and I actually did find it enjoyable and fulfilling. Just sayin'.
    - ethbr1 3y ago
      What did you enjoy about it? Curious!
      - JohnFen 3y ago
        I enjoyed that what I did made a real impact on people, I enjoyed the sense of satisfaction from making a space nice again, and I enjoyed that it wasn't intellectually demanding, which gave me plenty of time every workday to think about hard programming problems. There's a real sense of accomplishment in it, and it's nice that people can immediately see and enjoy the results of your hard work. There's also something about doing manual labor that is satisfying. And I enjoyed being "invisible" around people who used the spaces I cleaned. You usually don't exist, so people tend to continue to speak to each other as if nobody else is listening. I learned a lot about people that way.
  - namaria 3y ago
    The 'probably not' bit of your reasoning is self serving.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

> so instead we basically do UBI through inefficient, unnecessary jobs. Your first 3 bullet points make sense, but this last one is where I think the normal theory behind "bullshit jobs" really falls apart. Every individual business has a large, strong economic incentive to not hire these bullshit jobs if they don't need to, so why should we think they would be so generous to engage in this "bullshit jobs charity"? I think what is really happening is that as society advances, lots of rules, regulations and processes just build up and up over time, and this complexity eventually becomes self-sustaining, even if it greatly diverges from the original intent of the original rules. Case in point (which is a common case I know) is the complete, total insanity of the US healthcare system, specifically how healthcare is paid for. Literally every single person I know that has ever gotten into some aspect of healthcare payments (potentially with an idea to improve the madness) eventually comes to the conclusion "The whole system is completely fucked, it should all just be torn down and greatly simplified." The problem, though, is now there are a ton of entrenched interests who depend on that complexity for their livelihood (I heard it referred to as "an abusive relationship" - Company A exists to "simplify some aspects of healthcare payments", which means they depend on the underlying complexity in the first place to exist), so there are no real incentives from the people that control the levers to simplify. So a lot of those bullshit jobs come about to manage that complexity, but it's not like some company thought "let's hire people to do busywork so they'll have employment."

ludston 3y ago
Whilst business owners have a financial incentive not to employ people, there are competing incentives. For example, non-owners are incentivised to have more people reporting to them because it increases their status and status is usually correlated with salary. In fact, when you are rich enough that money doesn't mean anything any more, you may as well have a bunch of people employed to do nothing but make you feel important and powerful.
- spease 3y ago
  > In fact, when you are rich enough that money doesn't mean anything any more, you may as well have a bunch of people employed to do nothing but make you feel important and powerful. I’d just like to proactively coin the term “Ego Engineer” for the post-AGI world.